I suspect that he's doing some weasel-wording in terms of use cases in part just to make his proposal sound more novel and more hypergrowth-capable than it actually is. Aside from the question of why you'd want to put your money on a convicted fraud who was unable to deliver a simpler project; it's just not clear how novel, and how favorable for the frothy growth that VCs love, the proposal is.

Talking about "AI powered planes" seems like a way of trying to ignore the fact that 'drones', which are incidentally often rather small but need not be, are something others have been actively and aggressively exploring for years to decades now; with the accompanying question of why we'd be interested in a latecomer with a hype deck; and talking about 'AI' rather than 'autopilot' seems like a way of trying to ignore the number of aircraft that(while they do not go uncrewed today for regulatory purposes) are capable of executing most of their flight under the control of some (relatively) simple and well understood feedback systems; or the hybrid systems (like the predator and reaper drones, which at this point are old enough that some of them have cycled out of service) that would temporarily bring a human in to do hands on stick for particular operations but could mostly buzz around unattended so that a single operator could handle several of them at the same time.

There's clearly a lot of use case for aircraft that don't require a pilot; it's just much less clear how much room there is for it to be an exciting mostly unfilled space where revolutions will happen and there are enormous fortunes to justify the enormous risks; rather than actually being a combination of bulk civil aviation where the existing autopilots are probably 90% there but nobody really wants the blowback of cutting the pilot out; and all the various drone applications where people who aren't this guy are years ahead of him.

Going by "Walmart said that both patents were "unrelated to dynamic pricing," as the patent issued in January was specific to markdowns" it sounds like they are going to try the argument that it's not evil dynamic pricing; it's glorious personalized savings!

Those are the same thing arrived at by superficially different routes, obviously; but in terms of the psychology it wouldn't be at all surprising if you can convince people that being offered discounts calculated to be just big enough to get them to bite is totally awesome; where being offered prices just below the level that makes them scream is brutal oppression even though it's the same price, so I wouldn't bet against it working.

Clearly they got the patent, so somebody was convinced; but I'm puzzled by what you could actually patent at this sort of scale. I could imagine an specific implementation involving some genuinely clever techniques that might be novel enough to patent; or a specific good implementation being a juicy trade secret; but at a high level "try to do some price discrimination while balancing sales rate and margin" sounds like a classic "ancient obvious thing; but we envision a system involving a computer" patent.

A university drama department actually did this with "Mission to the Unknown". They recreated all of the sets and costumes, the works. It was an absolutely inspired project.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

First up, before anything else, I am extremely glad you got the hope and encouragement you needed. Grief is rough, especially when you're going through it alone.

You are correct, so I'm somewhat careful with the AI dance. I will rarely discuss inner feelings with it, because that pushes the risk higher precisely because it is a mirror. Like the one in the Harry Potter novel, it will show your innermost desires. If you'd rather a different analogy, it's an amplifier, and if you talk for too long with it, the positive feedback loop does some interesting things with your mind that aren't terribly printable. And that's not always the greatest idea.

So I use it for wild speculation in science fiction/fantasy. Enough that it helps with the intellectual boredom, but not so much that I venture into believing it's real.

The idea that "normal" people are immune to delusions does somewhat fly in the face of research showing the incredible ease of inducing false memories, the research into mass hysteria (such as the Satanic Panic), and research into mob dynamics.

I freely admit that I'll sometimes simply sit and chat with AI, because there really aren't many humans who have the capacity to hold conversations any more, and that puts me in an extremely high-risk group. But, honestly, the choices these days are AI (and risk becoming psychotic), social media (and risk becoming suicidal or psychotic), or hang out with the same sort of people who have done so much damage over time (and risk being suicidal), or... well... really, that's about it.

There are no good options. The outcomes are bleak and, unless you are in a clique, that's how it is and how it has always been.

...is largely irrelevant to the question (he has worked in war zones and those tend to be, ummm, less respectful, shall we say....) and is prone to change its mind at the drop of a hat. There's sectors in the British political scene who have no problem with promoting acts of terror and murder against those they don't like and it's kinda unlikely that they'll hold a referendum on whether to murder a street artist if he posts something they find offensive.

(Depending on which part of the political scene you find yourself allied with, you'll doubtless point to other sectors, but it seems very very unlikely that anyone would subscribe to the notion that there aren't influential psychopaths in Britain, even if there's no agreement on who those are.)

Britain DOES enshrine a right to privacy, as Rupert Murdoch keeps discovering, and much of Europe mostly enshrines the same ideas (occasionally even more strongly). As for "public interest", I would LOVE to hear an explanation of precisely what public interest this serves. No, the public being interested is not the same thing.

"We've done so much damage to rule of law that we can now claim that paying a fixer with political connections $10 billion to close an M&A deal is plausible!"

"We've achieved one 9 of reliability; is it really worth spending more than 10% of our time trying to improve?"

There is, presumably, an amount of time savings where this could be justified(at least for things that you, ultimately, only do because they pay the bills; not ones of some intrinsic value); but it seems particularly grim to deal with the changed nature of the work for such paltry savings.

Going from 'thinking about things you know about' to 'keeping a close eye on an erratic intern who can bullshit really fast' is a fairly dramatic downgrade in terms of the quality and apparent futility of what you are doing. At least junior people sometimes improve thanks to mentoring, even if it's not something you do specifically to save time in the immediate term. A relentless torrent of glib and dense, though, is hell compared to just doing it yourself; so the idea that you aren't even saving time by doing so is pretty grim.

It is certainly true you can't watch the whole of The Dalek's Masterplan (where you should really include Mission to the Unknown, making it a 13-parter). The full audio exists, the Target novelisation of it exists (it spans 2 novels!), but yeah, it would be nice if we could someday watch the whole story.

Doctor Who is theatre that merely happens to be shown on TV. It is intended to show the same sort of stuff as a theatrical production and, as such, it is arguably strong for what it is. The same could be said of Thunderbirds/Stingray. Yes, it is intended to be child-accessible and child-safe, but even with thew most juvenile of any of these, the stories have a complexity and depth you won't find in The Fast And The Furious or The Blacklist.

If the cops are going to hold people without charge for months for bullshit reasons and then act like there's nothing wrong with that could they, please, try to focus on the "If you've done nothing wrong you have nothing to worry about!" idiots? At least with those guys it would be educational outreach.

Normally you just sort of ignore the collection of random side jobs that, of course, C-levels can work at the same time without being accused of double-dipping; but it just explains so much that that Adobe has overlap with a major source of healthcare costs.